Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña French, 1807-1876

Comtesse de V. (her sale: Paris, 17 March 1890, lot 8)
Serge von Dervionie (his sale: Georges Petit, Paris, 15 November 1906, lot 10)
Galerie Georges Petit & Arnold and Tripp, Paris

By the 1850s, Diaz was moving away from the Barbizon landscape subjects for which he is best known, and exploring new figural themes. These included orientalist subjects inspired by his admiration for Alexandre Decamps and Eugène Delacroix, important examples of which, such as Eastern Children (Cincinnati, Taft Museum) and In a Turkish Garden (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), are to be found in public collections.

These paintings have a theatrical feel to them, in that Diaz never travelled to the East. Nevertheless, they display his skill as a colourist and his extraordinary ability to render light. Femmes au repos has almost impressionistic overtones, which became increasingly characteristic in Diaz's later work. Indeed, in 1863 Diaz had met Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, who admired his brilliant colours and richly worked compositions.